Earth's Mightiest: Siege Heats Up

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Tom Brevoort discusses Siege's death(s) and the revamp of the Avengers franchise. What's this about more than two Avengers books?

By Richard George

The past few weeks have been such a hurricane that we're still playing a bit of catch-up. With all of the news and interviews coming out of Marvel and DC regarding upcoming titles, it's sometimes easy to overlook the fact that huge books are coming out… right now.

Siege #2 was one of those huge releases, and we had the chance recently to chat with Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort about the second installment of Brian Bendis's event. Naturally, since there are so many news items hitting the Interwebs, we wanted to get Tom's first thoughts on Heroic Age, including what it's like to completely revamp the Avengers line.

And what's this about more than two Avengers titles?

Read on for a ton of information about Siege and Heroic Age. Be warned that there are spoilers here for Siege #2. That's probably a bit obvious but we thought we'd mention it just in case any of you are waiting for collections… though you've probably heard the major development in that issue already. But, if you haven't, watch out, because we get into detail about the events that occurred.

IGN Comics: First I want to touch upon is Siege #2. I think you can guess what I'm going to ask about. I wanted to talk about the death of Ares …

Tom Brevoort: He's dead? What?

IGN Comics: I think it was pretty clear in the book. –laughs- I mean, it was about as clear as …

Tom Brevoort:Oh, I don't know. I'm still seeing [message board] threads where people are asking things like, "What should his status be? He's a god, he's immortal, so maybe they can put his spleen back in or something."

IGN Comics: And his spine and his ribcage. I was curious - when it comes to killing a character like that, especially in a major event, how much vetting does that have to go through? Brian comes up with the idea that he wants to kill Ares - is that something that you and he discuss personally or is that something that has to happen at a summit? What's the process?

Tom Brevoort:It doesn't need to happen at a summit, but if you're talking about killing off a major character, it's something certainly that Joe needs to know about, that probably our publisher, Dan Buckley, needs to know about. There aren't many more layers other than that. And depending on the character or the circumstances there may be a more back and forth conversation about it.

To be perfectly honest, I was surprised at the ease with which we killed Ares. I think that's just reflective of the fact that Brian, having used him now for the last couple of years, primarily in Mighty Avengers and Dark Avengers, along with the artists that he worked with, was responsible for making that character as popular as he is. And while he's certainly appeared in other titles - he's had his own limited series here and there along with one-shots and guest appearances - that Avengers run Brian did was really the spine of him gaining that public eye and that popularity. I think, given that, the fact that it was Brian that wanted to tear him to pieces… he had maybe a little more leeway there than somebody else might have. But I was actually kind of surprised. He ran it past me at first, and I kinda went, "Oh, I don't know about this. I don't know if you're going to get traction on this, Brian." But it turned out to be far easier than I would have anticipated going into it.

IGN Comics: So when you're killing a character like Ares, does that receive the same level of attention than someone like Captain America or Wasp or something like that? Comparatively, it was a quicker and easier type of deal?

Tom Brevoort: It probably receives the same amount of attention as the Wasp. Cap's death received more attention, because he's a more primary character to us, and even not knowing what the news cycle is going to be like at the time that book came out, people could kind of intuit that would be something the world outside of comics would be interested in. Whereas the world outside of comics isn't all that interested in the Wasp or Ares as characters. I would say that the Wasp's death got the same level of scrutiny and Cap's death got a little more, or at least a little more conversation.

IGN Comics: In terms of Ares as a character, I found it interesting because his resolve changed significantly in those early pages, leading up to the fight with Sentry. Do you think Ares' change of heart speaks more to Heimdall's stature as a fellow god or was that really more dealing with Osborn's false pretenses and Ares never really trusting Norman?

Tom Brevoort: I think it was a little from each column, but I think it had more to do with the latter than with the former. Heimdall revealing this to him was the mechanism by which he got this information. But he says fairly clearly in issue #1, "I'm not really down with invading Asgard; this is not the right thing to do." And Norman says, "This is the right thing to do because x, y and z." And Ares pretty much tells Norman right then and there, "Okay, but if you're not being straight with me, you're gonna pay for it." And then, 22 pages later, Ares discovers that, surprise, surprise, Norman has not been straight with him.

So I think that more than anything else, that set up and defined the parameters of Ares' switch. The fact that it happens to be Heimdall who delivers that information, delivers that message - certainly Heimdall is a figure of some stature within and among the Asgardians. He's respected as the guardsman of the gate and the way of the Rainbow Bridge and so forth. But that could have been Balder or it could have been Fandral or it could have been Volstagg and probably the result would have been very much the same. It was more about Ares being used in a way he wasn't comfortable being used to wage war against his fellow gods.

IGN Comics: I think for many readers, certainly for me, the most shocking part about the death of Ares wasn't so much that he died, but the matter in which his death was presented. Internally, when you guys saw the pages that Olivier delivered, were you guys at all, was there any consternation about like, "Oh, we can't put this out there. We can't publish this. There's a spine in the middle of the page," you know?

Tom Brevoort: As it tends to be the case when we do something like this, and there's a big thing like this, in this instance, we looked at that page, and I flagged it, and we shot it around to our higher echelon brain trust - Joe [Quesada], Axel [Alonso], me, [Marvel Chief Operating Officer] "Ski" - and talked it through. We tweaked it a little bit from what was originally handed in. I actually waited until it was colored before I sent it around to everybody, because you see it in pencil, and you see it in the inks, and it's not quite the same thing as seeing it in color. And we tweaked it a little bit in color but not too much.

The overall feeling was, one, it's such an over-the-top image. Due to that fact, it almost becomes abstract; it's almost like looking at an anatomical drawing. And, given the characters involved, Ares and the Sentry, if you're going to kill Ares and believe that he's dead, nothing less than this image is really going to do it for you. You turn the page and it's just a shocking, in-your-face, we're-serious-about-this-story kind of an image.

I've taken a little flack online the last week because somebody on Twitter asked a question about it, and I responded flippantly. I got an email or two saying, "How can you be so flippant about the death of Ares? Don't you understand how important this is to us?" I do. People just don't tend to always click to my sense of humor when I'm dealing with these things. At the end of the day these are all characters we love and connect to and so forth. But they're also all lines on paper. I can put Ares back together tomorrow like this [snaps fingers] if I so choose, if that's where the story takes us. It's a slightly different thing being in the trenches, dealing with these characters as the substance of stories, rather than something that you relate to from the outside.

IGN Comics: I was curious about the impact that Ares' death will have. We see Phobos wanting to go and join Fury and his crew of Secret Warriors into battle but he gets left behind. When will we see the reaction of Phobos?

Tom Brevoort: The Siege: Secret Warriors one-shot and Dark Avengers #16. You'll see the reaction of Phobos and exactly what that portends. I don't want to say too, too much, but Dark Avengers #16 and Siege: Secret Warriors would be the comics to look for that.

IGN Comics: You guys have been marketing and mentioning a special called Fallen with no details. Is Fallen going to deal with Ares or is that something completely unrelated?

Tom Brevoort: No, it is not. I said, again in my snarky Twitter stream a while back, I mentioned that there were three significant casualties in Siege, one of which would surprise people—the one that would surprise people was Ares, in my mind. I thought that nobody was going to see that coming, even when the two of them were fighting; I didn't think anybody would guess, "Oh, they're going to kill Ares now." Not to make this sound like, "Yay! We're having a death march!", but there are yet two significant casualties to come. And I don't mean to make light of it. I'm very – you can tell people when they read the transcript - I'm very somber right now. I am speaking with the greatest reverence, because that doesn't always translate into text as we talk about these things. –laughs-

IGN Comics: Is there any way you want to characterize these two impending deaths? Is there anything you can say?

Tom Brevoort:Both of the remaining casualties come fairly directly out of the thrust of the story. I don't think either of them will surprise anybody to the degree that the Ares' death was surprising. They're both pretty significant. I would tend to guess, if you poll the comics community on the internet right now, I'm going to guess that 75 percent of the people could guess at least one of them if not both. We're now two issues in; we are 50 percent of the way through this story.

Actually, let's go, right now. Give me your two picks, Rich, and I won't say yes or no, but a few months from now when this is all over, we'll be able to look back.

IGN Comics: Alright. Well, off the top of my head, I would go with, ah, Norman seems to be the clear one. You just sort of feel like he's going to get his comeuppance for all that he's done, ruling the world for a year. And in a way, I think it might be interesting because you can show a tragic element to it as well.

The other I think… he's smaller perhaps, but I feel like Bullseye/Hawkeye is going to fall. That guy just is completely out of his league. I mean, what's a guy who can throw playing cards gonna do against a god with a big sword and hammer? Those'll be my two picks… We'll see...

Tom Brevoort: -laughs- We'll come back in fifty pages or so and see how you did.